The Earth's orbit has, over time, been increasingly cluttered with orbital debris (“space debris” or “space junk”), including broken satellite fragments, discarded rocket parts, collision products, and other objects ranging in size from small fragments to large rocket stages. This orbital debris is undesirable as it can easily damage spacecraft and/or may pose a threat if it survives re-entry through the Earth's atmosphere.
A variety of methods have been proposed for controlling, de-spinning, and de-orbiting relatively large pieces of “non-cooperative” orbital debris. Such systems include, for example, various types of nets, harpoons, electrostatic charging systems, robotic arms, and the like. Such systems are unsatisfactory in a number of respects. For example, while it is relatively easy to design a system capable of grasping (or “grappling”) an object having a known size and shape, it is a much more difficult task to provide a general-purpose grappling device that is “adaptive” and capable of grappling objects that may have an arbitrary range of sizes and shapes.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide improved systems and methods for grasping objects in space, such as orbital debris.